By Rihaab Mowlana

“He’s just my work husband.”
“She’s like my work wife.”
Sounds harmless, until your actual partner hears it.

It’s a joke. A meme. A hashtag we fling around with our iced coffees and petty work gossip. But behind the banter, something’s shifting, and not everyone’s amused.

More and more Sri Lankans are adopting the “work husband / work wife” label: that one colleague you vent to, lunch with, confide in, and maybe even lowkey emotionally lean on a little too much.
This isn’t about physical affairs. It’s not about stolen glances or after-hours hookups. What we’re talking about here lives in the grey. The subtler stuff. The kind of emotional closeness that quietly starts to compete with your real-life relationship, even if you’d swear, hand on heart, that it’s all just platonic.

Because when someone else knows how you take your coffee, when to calm you down, and what your boss said that pissed you off today… What’s left for the person waiting for you at home?

What Even Is a Work Spouse?

Think office bestie meets therapist meets unofficial hype squad. Your work spouse is the person who gets you through the day, has your back at meetings, and knows all the dirty gossip before the rest of the team’s even logged on.

As one ad agency executive put it: “We’re basically married, minus the ‘intimacy’ and the shared bills and everything that comes with a real marriage.”

Whether it’s your “office wife” always slipping you extra brownies at meetings or your “office hubby” who somehow knows exactly when to ping you memes during your 2 p.m. slump, the dynamic is real. And increasingly, it’s raising real questions.

“I’m Not Jealous. I’m Just... Uncomfortable.”

Sure, some might dismiss it as insecurity. But real-life partners of work spouses aren’t always amused by the dynamic, especially when they find themselves the last to know things.

Amal* said he realised something had shifted when his girlfriend started sharing more with her colleague than with him. “They had all these inside jokes and nicknames. She’d vent to him about things that I’d only find out later, if at all. I felt like the outsider in my own relationship.”

For Dayan*, it was the late nights. “She kept staying back to ‘work on pitches’ with the same guy. I trusted her, but at some point, I started asking myself, am I the husband, or is he?”

Shehara*, meanwhile, noticed how her boyfriend’s lunch breaks slowly became off-limits. “Every time I called, he was out eating with the same girl from sales. It was always her. Never me. And if I brought it up, I was accused of overthinking.”

And Zahara* put it bluntly: “My husband’s ‘work wife’ knows how he likes his tea and coffee, what triggers him at work, and somehow even what he’s getting me for my birthday. I didn’t sign up for a third party in my marriage.”

Hash* shared a friend’s experience with her husband’s work wife that pushed things even further. “I had a friend who had an issue recently where the woman was calling her husband “sudu” and “sweetheart”. It's really toxic, paired with these compulsory dinners and drinking sessions, bosses also have post-work for birthdays and promotions. Let people go home! They have lives and fully fledged families out of the office!”

It's not about paranoia. It's about patterns. When someone else becomes your partner’s emotional home base, even without crossing any physical lines, it can still leave you feeling pushed out, and that hits different.

Defence Mode: The Work Spouse Warriors

Not everyone agrees it’s that deep.

For many, their work spouse is a lifeline. A source of sanity in a job that’s otherwise mind-numbing, soul-crushing, or just painfully boring. Sasha* calls hers a lifeline. “He keeps me sane. I would have quit this job without him. It’s not romantic. Honestly, it’s just survival.”

Dilan* credits his work wife for getting him through his roughest months. “She’s the reason I didn’t walk out during probation. I owe her drinks for life, not my heart.”

Aidan* says the title is just a joke. “We tease each other and call it a ‘marriage’ because it feels like that sometimes. But there’s no confusion. My real partner knows it’s just humour.”

Some even argue that this kind of closeness prevents cheating, that having someone to talk to at work keeps them from looking for validation in riskier places.

But is it really harmless… or are we just giving emotional affairs a cute nickname and calling it a team bonding exercise?

The Danger Zone: Where’s the Line?

It’s not the label that’s dangerous. It’s the role that person plays in your life.

As a psychology educator, I often teach about emotional intimacy and how it’s not just about romance or physical closeness. It’s about who you turn to first when something goes wrong. Who gets your unfiltered thoughts? Who makes you feel seen, validated, and understood? And when that person isn’t your partner, it matters.

The term “emotional infidelity” gets tossed around a lot, but it’s real, and it hurts. You might not be crossing physical boundaries, but you’re still building a kind of closeness that can leave your actual partner feeling excluded, confused, and sidelined.

In a culture like ours, where appearances matter and emotional needs are rarely discussed openly, the “work spouse” label lets people stay in denial. It’s easier to joke about your “office wife” than admit that you’re sharing emotional intimacy that probably belongs somewhere else.

And let’s be honest, the dynamics here aren’t always as innocent as we claim. Especially when things start happening behind the scenes. Messages that get deleted. Details that never get mentioned. And that one overly familiar photo from the office trip that somehow never made it to the team WhatsApp.

So where’s the line? If you wouldn’t say it in front of your partner, maybe don’t say it at all. If you’re venting about your partner to your work spouse, you’re already crossing it. And if your day feels incomplete without that one “good morning” text, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why.

Boundaries aren’t about being cold or distant. They’re about being honest. Because sometimes, what we call friendship is really just connection in disguise, and if you're not careful, it’ll take root where it shouldn’t.